


I'm No Actor, I Never Was

by woodlands



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Paris (City), Pining, Singing in the Rain AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 14:00:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/762134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodlands/pseuds/woodlands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The New Derek Hale: He Yodels, He Jumps Around to Music!” is the tagline Stiles sends him, after which he’d written: “seriously tho you’d make a killing, people would come to see u sing, hahahahah.”</p><p>“Nobody would come to see me jump off the Garnier onto a damp rag,” Derek mutters, feeling sorry for himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm No Actor, I Never Was

**Author's Note:**

> A sort of Singing in the Rain!AU, for the [Teen Wolf Spring Fling](http://teenwolfspringfling.tumblr.com/) organized over on Tumblr.

It’s a Tuesday morning, a couple of birds are making sweet music over the sound of the traffic below the window, and _everything sucks_.

“The New Derek Hale: He Yodels, He Jumps Around to Music!” is the tagline Stiles sends him, after which he’d written: “seriously tho you’d make a killing, people would come to see u sing, hahahahah.”

“Nobody would come to see me jump off the Garnier onto a damp rag,” Derek mutters, feeling sorry for himself. He shuts the laptop and frowns at his coffee, which went cold ten minutes ago. Derek hasn't sung in front of another person in years, not since he was little and his mother would dance him around the kitchen and hum old Claude François tunes.

Laura looks up, tilts her head thoughtfully, and then gets up to put a k-cup into the keurig. “I would come to see that.”

He glares at her, but takes the proffered coffee and puts the old one in the sink. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Working from home today, wanted to spend time with you." 

Which means, of course, that Stiles is coming over 

Laura loves Stiles, and when Derek first hired him as his manager Laura had driven Derek to meetings simply to be able to spend the first fifteen minutes laughing with Stiles about Derek’s past American film roles—a lot of stunt double work, three Lifetime Original Movies, Bobo in _The Clown_ —to the extent that Derek had, for a long time, dealt miserably with the thought of Laura and Stiles dating. 

 _That_ had been a total misjudge of the situation, because when Derek finally brought it up, Laura had literally done a spit-take and proceeded to cackle for much too long. “Wow, no,” she’d gasped, mopping half-heartedly at the water she’d so gracefully spit all over the table, “Oh my god, wow, have _you_ been operating under some serious misapprehensions.”

After that things had gotten both better and worse, better in that Derek doesn’t have to spend all his time thinking about how terrible it would be if Stiles was dating Laura and, like, coming over all the time, worse in that whenever Derek complains about Stiles Laura gets that look on her face like she knows something Derek doesn’t. That’s a look she’s had since they were children and Derek’s hatred for it has grown exponentially.

At the moment he’s too depressed to think about any looks Laura gives him at all, overwhelmed at the possibility that his acting career is over just as he’s finally gotten one—the numbers don’t lie, especially opening weekend box office numbers. **_Twist Ending_** , _Derek Hale’s Starring Role Flop_ , he thinks to himself. **_Twist Ending_** _, what a terrible decision_.

When the doorbell buzzes, Laura bounds to answer it, ringing Stiles in and waiting for him. When he gets there for a moment the hallway is filled with their excited chatter—“You brought me macarons?”—“No, they’re for—hey!”—“Damn, Stiles, you actually can’t come over without these ever again, holy shit,”— and then Stiles is in the kitchen, offering Derek a chocolate macaron, like Derek isn’t on a strict diet because he’s typecasted and _everything sucks_.

“Dude, just eat it,” Stiles tells him, waving it in his face, “It’s not even that big and you seriously look like you need one.” 

Derek scowls at him and takes the macaron. “I don’t like sweets.”

Laura muffles a shriek of laughter into her hands and swipes it from him. “You cried at Shelley Edgewick’s party because you couldn’t have more than two cupcakes." 

“I was eleven!”

“Are you blushing?” Stiles demands, advancing on Derek and poking him just underneath the cheekbone, grinning like a maniac, “You are. Derek Hale! Blushing.”

He swats the hand away and takes the sweet back, shoving it into his mouth. It was meant to give him a few seconds of obligated chewing to try to regain some of his dignity, but that plan gets derailed when the macaron turns out to be a little too big to fit entirely in his mouth and causes his cheeks to puff out.

“Blushing chipmunk cheeks!” Stiles exclaims gleefully.

“If only they could see you now,” Laura sighs, “You seem to have managed to convince the world that you’re semi-threatening, but _we_ know the truth.” She slings an arm over Stiles’ shoulders. “You’re a big gooey mushball who loves sweets." 

“A big gooey mushball who’s definitely going to take the part,” Stiles threatens. He’s leaning back against the counter and the long line of his torso makes Derek swallow, turn and pour himself some water just for something to do. His attraction to Stiles was pretty immediate and only got worse, and Derek’s been relying on his acting education from NYU to keep it under wraps. God knows if Laura ever found out he’d never hear the end of it. 

Snagging the last macaron, Laura waves cheesily at them and disappears into the hallway, saying as she goes, “I’ll be in here if you two need a moderator,” and giggling about it all the way into her bedroom. 

Stiles smirks. “Moderator is definitely _my_ official job,” he says, “You two fighting sometimes feels like watching two squirrels with machetes.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He grabs for his bag, pulls out a folder, slaps it down in front of Derek. “Here are the details. But seriously, I don’t understand why you’re protesting this.”

“I don’t speak French—“

Stiles groans loudly and throws his hands up, reaching for Derek’s face and punctuating each word with a shake of Derek’s head. “It’s—in—English—I—told—you!" 

Feeling silly, Derek grabs Stiles’ face in return and says, “I—don’t—care—I’m—not—doing—it!”

“Why—did—you—hire—me—if—you—weren’t—gonna—listen—to—me—" 

Abruptly Derek pulls back, frowns. Stiles lets go of him, and his face feels cool when Stiles’ palms are gone. “Seriously, Derek,” Stiles says, “This would be the perfect opportunity to break out of your typecast.”

“I’m not doing a musical.”

Stiles makes an exasperated noise. “It’s not—look. This is a great opportunity to change your public image, which is what you hired me to do.” He pushes a hand into his hair, which has gotten longer since last May, when Derek hired him. “It’s hardly even a musical! It’s _alternative_.”

“Is that supposed to make me _want_ to do it?” Derek asks, and then sighs. “Fine. I’ll—“

“ _Yes_ ,” Stiles interrupts, pulling his fists in towards his body, expression gleeful. “Okay. Okay. I’ll get it all straightened out with the theater and you just sit pretty and do whatever you do when you’re not, um, doing what you do.” He makes a show of straightening up the papers on the counter and then straightening Derek’s shirt collar, which Derek doesn’t even bother to stop him from doing. He likes having Stiles’ hands on him. He tries not to think about it much, especially since Stiles puts his hands on him a _lot_.

“Just tell me what I have to sign and when rehearsals start,” he says, keeping his voice gruff, trying not to grin when Stiles does a little dance. “And go away.”

-

Weeks later Derek stumbles out of the rehearsal space at noon, limbs aching and sweaty. He keeps in shape, obviously, but they’re working on a scene with an extended, difficult dance routine, and it’s been working muscles he didn’t even know he had. The cool air is perfect on his heated skin, so he walks instead of taking the métro, heading down Rue de Rivoli. When they’d moved here last year, Laura had found them an apartment on one of the side streets off of Rue de Sébastopol, which was convenient for both of them and afforded them access to the Châtelet metro station. It does make it annoying now, though, because now that Derek is in rehearsals all the way across the city, the metro ride takes twenty minutes on the busiest line in Paris.

Paris has always felt weird for Derek, too big and too dirty, too well-dressed. He learned early on to stop wearing sweats out for anything other than a run. Laura, unsurprisingly, fit in immediately, whipping out her pastel blazers and killer heels and weird sunglasses, laughing at Derek when he complained about too-tight jeans or leather jackets that didn’t let him move his arms much.

He’s been here long enough that having to dress up every time he leaves the apartment isn’t too terrible, and it’s not like they can’t afford it—movies pay, and Laura’s a fairly sought-after architect. All in all it’s not too bad any more. And, if he’s being honest, having Stiles around at least keeps things interesting.

Speaking of—“What,” he snaps into the phone.

Stiles is having none of it. “Hey, sourpuss, what’s shakin’?”

“The foundation of your house, if you ever call me that again,” he says.

Stiles laughs, his voice warm in Derek’s ear. “Did you just get out of rehearsal?”

“Yeah. Sucked.”

“Too much singing?" 

“Too much _dancing_.” Derek won’t admit to Stiles that the singing is starting to be a problem—he’s faked a lingering cough so far but eventually he’s going to have to get over his fear of singing in front of an audience.

Stiles hums thoughtfully. “I’m going to have to come to one of your rehearsals—I’m having trouble imagining you doing anything other than your usual power strut and bowlegged man-stance.”

He switches his phone to the other ear, rifles in his pocket for his navigo pass for the métro. “I do not have a man-stance.”

“You totally do! With, like, glowering. What’d you think you’ve been doing, casual leaning?”

“Demi-pliés,” he says, just to hear Stiles choke out a laugh. On the list of things he’s not thinking about is their definitely unprofessional relationship, one where Stiles calls him for no apparent reason beyond attempting to annoy the hell out of him. “Listen, I’m heading into the métro. Was there something you needed?”

Stiles clicks his tongue. “Nope, just checkin’ in on my favorite dysfunctional theater actor. Call me when you get the chance tomorrow, though, okay? We need to go over some paperwork stuff.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Bye, Derek." 

“Bye.” When he heads into the métro to catch the next train back to Châtelet, he can’t stop turning the word ‘favorite’ over and over in his head. Wishing he could.

-

Derek picks up a guy at a bar near the apartment, and they make out enthusiastically in an alley around the corner, and he doesn’t speak enough French to ask him to come home with him, so instead he backs off when it starts to get too hot and heavy, goes for a walk to cool his head. He heads toward the river, jogging across the street so he can walk along the quai, watch the tour boats on the water. The Seine is an off-putting brown color in the day but at night it reflects the lights of the city and reminds Derek that people come to Paris to see this all the time. The only people out at this hour are people like him: a little drunk, a little tired. It’s nice.

He ends up down at the tip of the island under Pont Neuf, which looks out at most of Paris’s biggest tourist attractions—the Tour Eiffel sparkles to the left, the Louvre is lit up to the right. There’s surprisingly few people here tonight, so he snags a spot right at the end, dangles his feet off the edge.

“Fancy meeting you here,” comes a voice clearly attempting to hold in a laugh, and Derek turns to see Stiles sauntering toward him, clearly a little drunk, waving a bottle of wine at him. He plops down next to Derek, who snags the bottle from him before he smashes it on the flagstones. “Of all the islands in all the world—“

“I don’t think that’s how that goes,” Derek tells him, fighting to keep in a grin. Having Stiles around always makes him feel ten pounds lighter. “What are you doing wandering around by yourself?”

“Was on a date,” Stiles says, “He sucked. Ah—well, not in a literal sense, not that I put out on the first date—“

“Okay, I get it,” Derek says, trying to head him off. The kissing earlier left him with a low-grade level of arousal that flares up at the thought of Stiles and _sucking_. “Any chance you want to share some of this?” He thumbs the top of the wine bottle, not missing when Stiles’ eyes zero in on the action.

A few minutes later they’re swapping turns taking swigs from the bottle and Stiles is trying to remember the words to “A Pirate’s Life for Me,” and Derek hasn’t stopped laughing at the mangled lyrics Stiles has been coming up with. They’re leaning against each other and Derek’s not sure who started that.

“We’re divas and black sheep, we’re really rotten eggs,” Stiles is warbling, and before Derek can stop himself he’s chiming in on the “Drink up, me hearties, yo ho,” and cackling.

“It’s _devils_ , not _divas_ ,” he tells Stiles, chugging back a lot of wine all at once, throwing an arm around Stiles’ shoulders and leaning in, “You’re _so bad at this_.”

“Gimme that,” Stiles retorts, grabbing for the wine, but he sags into Derek’s side and tilts his head back when he drinks. Derek does his best not to stare at the line of his neck, so close, Derek would barely have to tilt his head down to mouth at the tendon or suck on Stiles’ jaw. It’s distractingly tempting tonight. There isn’t much stopping him.

A bateau mouche goes by and Stiles waves at the tourists, jostling Derek. Then he says, “Léon says you’ve been faking a cold.”

Léon is the director and he’s kind of a douche. “Um.”

“Is it because of the singing thing?”

Derek tilts his neck back so he can peer at the side of Stiles’ face. “What singing thing?”

Pursing his lips, Stiles looks down. “Laura told me you don’t sing.” He hiccups. “I wish I’d known _before_ I bullied you into joining the cast of a musical.”

The warmth of Stiles against his side keeps Derek from fleeing, because the urge to pull him closer is outweighed by his flight instinct. “I don’t—uh—“ He swallows, resentful when Stiles stays silent, wishing for the first time that Stiles would open his mouth and let words fall out. “I just don’t like singing.”

Stiles tilts his head back, nestling into the curve of Derek’s arm. “You don’t like singing or you don’t like singing with an audience?”

“Both?” It feels like a lie, but it also feels like the best answer to get Stiles off his case so that he can concentrate on lowering his heart rate or thinking of something perfect to say to maybe convince Stiles to kiss him.

Humming some bars of “A Pirate’s Life For Me,” Stiles pokes him in the abdomen. “I think you do like singing, Mr. Hale,” he tells him, his words just the tiniest bit slurred, “You just joined me in a _delightful_ rendition of a _classic_ Disney theme song.”

“Pirates of the Caribbean is hardly a classic,” Derek says. He’s deflecting. He knows it.

“Classic Disney _ride_ ,” Stiles says, “Didn’t you ever go to Disney World when you were little? Pirates was the best ride. After Splash Mountain Railroad.”

When Stiles tries to take a swig from the bottle, Derek plucks it from his fingers and sets it down on his other side. Stiles is maybe a bit too drunk. “Hey,” Stiles says. “Give that back. It’s my wine, I bought it—“

Derek smirks at him, tilts the bottle up, finishes it off himself.

“Ah, you _fucker_ ,” Stiles hisses at him, “Now I’m not sorry I made you do a musical, you _totally deserve it_.”

“I can hold my alcohol better than you,” Derek tells him, although the way he sways backwards a little definitely belies that statement.

“How do you know, this is the first time we’ve gotten drunk together, we’ve never—ah, gone to a bar, or—” Stiles turns bright red at this, and Derek’s grateful for a passing boat’s lights because otherwise he would never have noticed.

“I guess I don’t know,” he says, lowering his voice, feeling his heart ratchet up, “I guess we’ll have to go out for drinks to really know.” 

“Mmm, yes." 

“Somewhere in Saint Germain, maybe?”

“Mmm.”

A boat passes and makes the water splash up the side of the quai. The ‘E’ on the giant Samaritaine department store sign has started flickering, and the searchlight from the Tour Eiffel moves lulling through the clouds in front of them. It’s a warm night, but the breeze picking up makes it nice to be pressed against Stiles like this. They fall into a comfortable silence, punctuated by laughter or shouts from groups of French teenagers near them, and Derek likes it, likes that someone could look over and think them a couple. 

Eventually, Stiles breathes in deeply and suddenly through his nose, like he’s waking up, and straightens. Derek lets his arm drop away from Stiles’ warmth. “What time is it?”

“Uh,” Derek glances at his watch, “Almost one.”

Stiles is instantly on his feet. “Shit. I gotta catch the métro.”

“Which one?” Derek stands up, grabs the bottle.

“Saint-Michel Notre Dame, come on,” Stiles says, and then takes off, and Derek follows him, tossing the bottle in a recycling stand. Together they tear up the stairs onto the bridge and then make a mad dash along the quai towards the lit-up façade of Notre Dame. Derek almost gets hit by a car when Stiles darts out in front of him to cross towards the Saint Michel fountain, and Stiles shrieks with laughter while Derek swears vehemently, grabs his hand.

At the métro entrance Stiles lets go of Derek’s hand and waves jauntily at him before disappearing down the stairs.

Derek takes a long way home, crossing through the closed-up bird and flower market, lost in thought. He barely notices when it starts pouring, instead stuck on repeat, feeling Stiles’ hand in his, the way his hair had brushed against Derek’s neck for a whole five minutes.

He finds himself behind Notre Dame, soaked through with rain, ecstatic, not even embarrassed about his feelings, like he probably should. There’s no one around, so he lets himself give in to the excess energy and emotion, hops onto one of the old-style lamplights, spins his body around it with his head thrown back, thinking, this is the kind of night he could sing out loud in, this kind of rain, the feeling of Stiles’ smile and his shoulder tucked under him. 

He doesn’t remember getting home, shucking his clothes, or falling into bed, and when he wakes up the next morning he’s half-convinced it was a dream, but there’s a text from Stiles that reads _so fuckin hungover man_ and it’s all Derek can do not to grin helplessly at the ceiling.

 _Me too, you’re a menace_ , is what he sends back, before heading into the kitchen to make breakfast.

 - 

“Non, à gauche!” Genevieve is demanding, because she keeps forgetting that it’s an all-English speaking cast, but they’re used to it at this point, and when the music starts up again, Derek and Kate trip to the left before sliding seamlessly into twin somersaults. They’re supposed to be doing some kind of fast-paced, comedic dance, and it’s the last one they have to learn, but Derek can feel himself falling behind in the learning process, watching as Kate makes the moves work flawlessly on the first or second attempt.

Part of it is probably because Derek has grown to absolutely hate Kate.

“Ugh, non, je ne peut pas—We will take a break, yes? Derek, please, you have to try that jump differently, there is something—your foot? Yes?”

He nods, feeling miserable. It’s exhausting—he has no dance background. Attempting to balance learning a totally new skill set with the anxiety that comes with singing, now that he’s finally started participating at rehearsals, is draining. He collapses into a chair and chugs gratefully at a bottle of water Léon hands him as he comes into the studio.

“Good work, Derek,” Kate says to him sarcastically, tossing her hair over her shoulder and smirking at him, “You’re definitely improving.”

He glares at her. When they’d first worked together—six years ago, on the set of _Homebodies_ —he’d been half in love with her, followed her around like a puppy. She’d fucked him and then gotten him kicked off the project.

“That’s good to hear,” someone says over Derek’s shoulder, “I’d hate for my favorite client to let me down in the professional arena.”

It’s Stiles, of course, popping up like he’s been doing, randomly, over the last week. He drops a hand on the top of Derek’s head and grins openly at Kate. “Good to see you again, Miss Argent.”

“Likewise,” Kate says, and then disappears into the next room. Stiles doesn’t seem very sad to see her go.

“Having trouble with the routine?” Stiles asks him, sprawling out on the studio floor, which is pretty gross—Derek’s shed enough sweat in the last hour to know that much. “I could practically taste the sarcasm in that witch’s voice." 

He snorts, surprised. “You don’t like her either?”

“Nobody likes her,” Stiles says, shrugs, “Except audiences. She brings in the big bucks, I guess.”

Derek nods. “I’m just about ready to throw her into the Seine.”

“Hmm. Yeah.” Stiles looks around, at the empty studio, and then back at Derek. “Wanna show me what you’ve been working on?”

“No.”

“Aw, come on! I want to see those patented Derek Hale Moves in action!”

He frowns. “You’d be disappointed. I can’t get this dance right. 

“What’s the problem? You got everything else right.”

Derek frowns, slumps further in his chair. “This one’s supposed to be—funny.” When Stiles opens his mouth to question him further, he continues, “And I don’t really know how to do that with, uh, my body. I guess.”

“But dude you’re like ninety-nine thousand percent muscle,” Stiles tells him, giving him a once-over. Derek tries not to turn red when Stiles lingers.

He stands up, shakes his arms out, feeling nervous, loving the way Stiles is staring. Moving into the center of the room, he executes a flip and a roll that brings him up to a spin—and then bows, just because. “I can do everything, physically, I just—it doesn’t end up being _funny_. At all.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, standing up to move behind him, brushing his hands off busily, “I can help with this.” He grabs Derek by the shoulders and steers him to the side of the room, and Derek tries to decide if his hands linger or not.

“Here’s what it is,” Stiles says, planting himself in the middle of the room again, “You just—let go. Get loose. Be silly. Okay? Half of it is like, uh, imagine if you knew the dance by heart but you were doing it drunk, so you’re doing the dance but you’re also really silly about it.” He repeats the move Derek did, but he wobbles a little on the spin, making it obvious, giving a look of shocked embarrassment to the mirror.

And then he’s off, aping moves Derek recognizes from other dances he’s had to learn, which Stiles has watched at one point or another, because Stiles is always around, even though that’s not his job. And at first it’s hard to really understand what Stiles is talking about—he can see that Stiles is doing _something_ —it’s making Derek laugh, at least—but he can’t really identify it. 

“Make ‘em laugh,” Stiles says, whirling around, literally _falling_ , “You can be a Shakespearean scholar or like, a serious business actor without two cents to rub together, but all you gotta do is slip on a banana peel and they’re hysterical.” He gets up close to Derek and grabs his hands, dances them around in a mockery of a waltz, spins them too fast and then lets go, goes flying into the padded wall opposite the mirror.

“You moron,” Derek tells him, when Stiles ends up on the ground, laughing breathlessly.

“But you get it now, don’t you?” Stiles says, looking up at him, blinding.

“Yeah, I think so,” Derek says.

- 

Opening night:

Laura hands him a shot of absinthe before she hustles him out the door, saying, “Just be glad it’s not on fire,” and “You’re gonna be great,” and “Heard from Stiles? Is he going to be there?”

So he’s backstage and sweating already, freaking out and trying not to show it, letting the makeup woman fix something on his face, letting people shuffle him around, feeling in over his head. One of the extras, a girl named Kali, gives him a thumbs up, which doesn’t make him feel any better. 

Stiles is in the audience somewhere, and so is Laura, and Léon said they might film, and Kate looks extra murderous tonight. And his shoes feel weird.

But they bring the curtain up and he makes his entrance and slips into character, proud of himself for a few scenes and then slipping slowly into sadness, and suddenly it is intermission, and it hits him that he just sang a song about _dogs_ to an audience of 2,500 French speakers, and he didn’t fuck up.

Through intermission he does his costume change and drinks water and checks his phone, which has texts from ten people—three of whom were one-night-stands at some point—congratulating him on the first half.

Laura’s reads: _i don’t know about ur acting but im mad you’ve been holding out on me with the singing_

And Stiles’ reads: _the guy next to me started cryin, should i punch him for u_ followed by another that reads: _A+ job so far, good goin champ_

So he doesn’t bother reading the other ones, just sits to the side until the lights flicker and he’s up again, getting through the dances and the singing and even the kiss with Kate without any hiccups. It goes by in a blur. He’d thought that stage acting would be terrifying, but it’s kind of liberating—instead of a camera monitoring every tiny tic of his face, his body tells the story. He’s good with his body, so it works.

The applause hits him right in the bones.

After everything, Laura meets him in the dressing room and hands him a single rose, cracks up. “Good work, kid,” she says, and while it sounds like she’s trying to joke, it’s clear she’s proud of him. He hugs her, just to piss her off, because he’s sweaty and gross, overheated from the lights and the nerves. “Ugh, get off.”

“I have to clean up,” he says, gesturing at himself. 

Laura laughs, and then gives him a calculating look. “Are you going to use this to get laid? Because I haven’t been sexiled in months and I’d like to not start now.”

“Ugh, Laura, _go away_.”

-

The after party’s boring, and near the end he has to drag himself away because he can feel himself falling asleep on one of the tech crew’s shoulders. It’s a five minute walk from the bar they’d rented to his apartment so he slips out and doesn’t bother with a taxi. On a night like this he’d normally wander a bit before heading home—the moon’s out, it’s quiet, he hasn’t been drunkenly accosted yet—but he’s too exhausted.

Laura’s not home when he gets back—there’s a note that says, _The apartment’s yours! Feel free to be as loud as you want! Xoxo—_ and he’s grateful, because it means he can peel his dress shirt and pants off and climb into bed without having to talk to anyone.

Derek’s proud of himself, to be honest. He really didn’t think he’d had it in him. The idea of doing a stage musical encompassed everything that gave him night terrors—dancing, singing, being on stage. He’s still not totally convinced any of it actually happened.

His phone rings. He thinks about leaving it, but he glances at the caller ID anyway, and then nearly drops it trying to accept the call. He clears his throat. “Hey, Stiles.”

“Ah, you picked up!” Stiles sounds surprised. “It’s two am, dude, I thought you’d be, you know, still out, or—“ He trails off.

Derek lays back on his bed. “Nope. The after party sucked. I’m exhausted.”

“Well, yeah,” Stiles laughs, “You _killed it_ out there.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“No, seriously! I mean I knew you’d do great. Obviously! But you did way better than, uh, expected! I can’t wait to read the papers tomorrow, there are gonna be some fantastic reviews.”

“Laura’s not home tonight so I won’t get to read them until she comes back to translate for me,” Derek replies, sleepily.

There’s a pause. “Uh, well. Um. I’m actually kind of nearby…”

“You could translate for me?”

“If, uh, I came over and—if I stayed until morning?”

Derek flushes hot all over, realizing the implications, wanting to fucking yell out the window about it. “Ah. Uh—“

Stiles cuts him off nervously, “No, never m—hey, I gotta go, I’ll talk—“

“No! Stiles. Come over." 

Another pause. “You sure?”

He smiles to himself, drops his arm over his forehead. “Yeah. I mean, I’m exhausted, but—“

“Yeah, no, that’s fi—“

“Okay. I'll let you in." 

-

He buzzes Stiles in and unlocks the door, and then crawls back into bed. It doesn’t take very long between the buzz and the sound of Stiles coming in and locking the door behind him, but Derek’s already half-asleep again. He blinks at the light in the hallway as Stiles appears in his doorway.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.” Stiles smiles at him, toes off his shoes. “Can I—“

Derek rolls over a little to make room. “C’mere.”

So Stiles ends up in Derek’s bed with him, curled into his side, and he shushes all of Derek’s half-awake attempts at talking, just pushes his fingers into Derek’s hair and falls asleep like that, warm and close.

- 

The sunlight filtering in through the window wakes him, and Stiles isn’t there. He sits up.

The toilet flushes, and then Stiles is bounding back into the room, saying, “ _Yes_ , you’re awake, I’ve been up forever,” and flopping down onto the bed next to him.

“I’m going to kiss you,” Derek tells him. The room feels like a cocoon, all of a sudden, and it’s okay to say things like _I’m going to kiss you_ and to do things like lean over Stiles’ thin body and touch his eyebrows and jawline and then press their mouths together, sigh into him.

It’s a Saturday morning, a couple of birds are making sweet music over the sound of the traffic below the window, and Derek thinks it’s pretty reasonable to say that nothing sucks at all.

Except him, after a few minutes of steady makeouts and some heavy petting.


End file.
